Merchant and Payroll Solutions Take Center Stage at ETA TRANSACT 2022

Deluxe, a Trusted Payments and Business Technology™ company, debuted its new merchant services and payroll combo in Las Vegas this past month at TRANSACT. Generating more than a dozen leads in Payroll + HR Solutions, the market proved its enthusiasm for our unique suite of offerings under the One Deluxe umbrella.

TRANSACT is traditionally a payments event, focused on merchant services. First American has historically performed well at this event, given its long-standing trust and reputation in the industry. Now under the Deluxe umbrella, the power of the combined offering resonated with professionals looking to do more with less while coping with record inflation, the great resignation, and the afterglow of a global pandemic

Mark Johnson, general manager of Payroll + HR at Deluxe participated in a panel titled “The Sell vs. The Solve – What Your Merchant Isn’t Telling You,” in which he and other industry professionals discussed the secret to merchant (business owner) loyalty and how to create the right sales strategy and product mix for long-term growth. Deluxe took this opportunity to outline the benefits of partnering with providers who, in addition to merchant services, offer solutions for back-office support, revenue management, forecasting and managing expenses, and profitability, among other human resource and payroll functions. Some of the topics discussed included market trends affecting today’s merchants and complementary products and solutions today’s merchants are looking for.

Talent Acquisition, Streamlining Paperwork, and other SMB Hot Topics

Small business owners are always looking for new ways to attract and retain talent while reducing the time they spend on back-of-house functions. In response to these needs, the industry is seeing a heightened focus on specialization and verticalization.

To improve employee experience, business owners are looking for better ways to pay employees, especially those in hourly service industries like restaurants and retail. The key trend right now is finding ways to offer employees more choice in how they get paid beyond your typical ACH weekly, bi-monthly or monthly pay cycles. Small business owners are looking for more optionality in the form of paycards with financial wellness tools, faster ways to deliver off-cycle payroll payments, and delivering pay as earned, also known as earned wage access.

To reduce manual business management tasks, small businesses sometimes seek out software vendors that specialize in certain verticals with embedded payments commonly included. While embedded payments functionality isn't new, we’re starting to hear a lot more about embedded payroll. These business management platforms in verticals may already be offering adjacent services like onboarding, timekeeping, or scheduling. While having all these jobs managed by one provider seems promising, more often than not, these products don’t have the ability to speak to one another, forcing business owners into a world of weekly manual imports and exports across systems.  This is obviously not the best use of time for merchants trying to run their day-to-day business.

As champions of small business, Deluxe has responded to both needs with innovative solutions aimed at helping people pay, get paid, and grow – with ease. Small businesses need the same tools as larger businesses to attract and retain employees, using tools such as digital hiring and onboarding, training and HR support from subject matter experts. Part of retention includes making time consuming jobs easier and more efficient. Just this month, Deluxe announced an agreement with Codat, the universal API for business data that provides connectivity to mid- and large- sized clients to build integrated products for small businesses. Through this effort, Deluxe Payroll + HR Solutions customers will now be able to reconcile their accounting data back into their accounting software automatically, eliminating the manual import and export.

Why SMBs Need More from a Payment Acceptance Partner

One of the biggest challenges facing business owners today is managing compliance. Human Resources is a rapidly evolving space and it’s nearly impossible for business owners to stay on top of all the changes taking place at local, state, and federal levels. Two prime examples of recent mandates requiring massive business changes involve 401(k) plans and compliant harassment training. 

• 401(k) Mandates: Eleven states now require businesses of all sizes to offer a 401(k) plan to all employees, with more states in the pipeline to implement in the next couple of years.  
• Compliant Harassment Training: Seven states now require compliant harassment training for all employees. Businesses with one dedicated HR manager (or none!) have the option of performing this task themselves or using technology from their payroll and HR provider.

Deluxe is helping businesses stay up to date and compliant by offering a library of HR self-service tools and support. In addition, our solutions offer an affordable Learning Management System that provides organizations with over 300 robust training courses that cover a wide variety of topics including compliant harassment training.

Payroll is an essential need for every business, starting with their first employee. And with an average customer lifespan of seven years, non-payroll providers would benefit greatly from including multiple solutions (namely payroll) in their offerings. Aside from the financial gains, when a provider is able to support back-office finances in multiple ways, they help their clients save time and money. As a merchant services and Payroll + HR Solutions provider, Deluxe is able to serve all 50 states and Canada across multiple verticals.

We are excited about the possibilities when it comes to offering Payroll and Merchant Services together to small businesses directly and through our partners, as we continue to make the experience more seamless for each party involved from the point of sale to onboarding to ongoing customer success.